It wasn't long Wednesday morning before Don Lantis had fielded three phone calls from people wanting to go into the marijuana dispensary business with him.
Lantis, the grand old man of fireworks in North Sioux City, is personally not fond of marijuana and has never used it. (He prefaced this several times by noting, "I'm 79 years old.") But it's impossible to deny the moneymaking potential of marijuana in North Sioux City, the same sort of opportunity that compelled his father to open Lantis Fireworks in the border town 75 years ago.
"There was money to be made there," Lantis said of his father's long-ago decision to sell fireworks directly across the border from Iowa where they were illegal.